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BREAKING: Al Gore still not running, though superdelegates may force him to, only probably not

In his column today, Joe Klein spins out a preposterously unlikely scenario whereby the Democratic superdelegates get together and conspire to pass over both Obama and Clinton and instead hand the nomination to … Al Gore. Two or three paragraphs in I thinking, oh, Joe, pish-tosh. Then: Pish-tosh, you say, and you’re probably right. OK […]

How the Monterey Bay Aquarium makes its safe-seafood list

When it comes to safe seafood, the list-makers don’t horse around. Photo: SqueakyMarmot Back in the late 1990s, I happened to attend an exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California called “Fishing for Solutions.” The experience profoundly changed my attitude toward seafood and the supposedly limitless abundance of the sea. The exhibit focused not […]

Prius ‘proven’ to get worse gas mileage than BMW 520d

This story in the U.K.'s Times Online is racing around the interwebs. Google "BMW 520d" and note how many pages deep it goes. Two goofballs journalists took a road trip, one in a Prius and the other in a BMW 520d. The BMW purportedly got about 4 percent better gas mileage than the "gas guzzling" Prius, which amazingly only managed a dismal 40 mpg. Coincidentally, that is exactly what our Prius got on a road trip last summer, which was not only jammed with people and camping gear but also had a giant cargo carrier strapped to the roof! Odd how the Prius always manages to lose these contests ... unless they're performed by independent third parties like Consumer Reports (Prius: 44 mpg, TDI Jetta: 34).

The Prius has set the bar and competitors are finally going after it. This is how homo sapiens are. This is what motivates them to build skyscrapers and airliners. For the first time in human history, they are finally competing over green issues, which is all good. The following story carefully orchestrated farce is, in reality, a tribute to the Prius engineering that kicked this whole show off. Somebody has a serious case of mileage envy.

EPA will request public comment on GHG regulation this spring

SCOTUS decreed that the U.S. EPA must decide whether the climate-change effects of carbon dioxide endanger public health, and, at long last, the agency is moving on that decision — kinda. In a letter to U.S. lawmakers Thursday, chief Stephen Johnson wrote that the EPA is writing proposed rules for regulation of CO2 emissions “from […]

L.A. Times mischaracterizes Pielke Jr.’s arguments in such a way as to make them newsworthy

Early in this L.A. Times piece, reporter Alan Zarembo characterizes Roger Pielke Jr.’s views as follows: His research has led him to believe that it is cheaper and more effective to adapt to global warming than to fight it. Instead of spending trillions of dollars to stabilize carbon dioxide levels across the planet — an […]

New report on massive growth of renewables last year

Climate Progress is the title of my blog posts' main home, as much as the "progress" part strains credulity at times. I only see two major quantitative areas of sustained progress: clean energy deployment (especially in Europe) and private sector clean-tech funding.

Those folk at Clean Edge, who wrote the best 2007 book on clean tech, The Clean Tech Revolution, have quantified these gains -- and made predictions about the future -- in a new report you can read here. Some interesting factoids:

Should emissions from employee commutes be included in company GHG inventories?

When businesses dip a toe in the rising sea of corporate action on climate change, the first box they check before diving in involves tabulating their own greenhouse-gas inventory. In getting your corporate house in order, the first step is defining where your yard ends and your neighbor's begins.

The good news: There is a clearly accepted international standard providing guidance to companies sorting "what's in" and "what's out" for their GHG inventory. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard is the playbook everyone is working from.

The bad news: Some issues are more clearly defined in the guidance than others, leaving individual companies to sort out their own best way forward.

Emissions from employee commutes are one such gray area. In these early days, how leading companies come down on this issue is critically important in setting a precedent. The GHG Protocol does provide general guidance on this issue, but more specific direction is needed.

Mood in the hood

John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company, was on Charlie Rose Tuesday night.

About 22 minutes into the segment, he says the following [my own transcription]:

If we don't drill more in this country, I am quite concerned about civil disturbances in our urban areas because of the price of fuel.

...

I was meeting in Los Angeles with mayor Villaraigosa and I asked him a specific question because I lived there during the Rodney King civil disturbances. [I] said, "How is the mood in the hood based upon the price of gasoline compared to the mood in the hood at the time of the Rodney King disturbances?" He said it's threshold.

Let us drill or those people will act all crazy again! You know how they can be when it comes to things like this.

And they say environmentalists are alarmist.

Two proposed solar projects to boost California’s solar capacity by half

Two large solar-power projects were proposed in Southern California this week that together could provide up to 500 megawatts of power, just over half the state’s current solar capacity and enough to provide electricity to about 300,000 homes. One of the projects, proposed by utility Southern California Edison, aims to put solar panels on 65 […]

Carbon taxes work when there’s substitutability and revenue is locked down for environmental goals

This is a guest post by Monica Prasad, who wrote an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times called "On Carbon: Tax, Don't Spend." It elicited responses from David Roberts and Charles Komanoff.